SIRONA TECHNOLOGY
“Climate change is disproportionately affecting this part of the world, but it’s also a game changer for the rest of the world,” Cella CEO and co-founder Corey Pattison tells me, explaining the concept to Mwangi and Ndirangu. “It’s also an opportunity to be entrepreneurial and creative in thinking because there are all these assets that places like Kenya have.”
Not only can the country offer cheap and abundant renewable energy, but supporters of the Kenya DAC hope that a young and educated local workforce can provide the engineers and scientists needed to build this infrastructure. In turn, this business could open up opportunities for the country's estimated 6 million unemployed or underemployed youth.
“This is not a one-time industry,” says Ndirangu, emphasizing his belief in the idea that jobs will come from green industrialization. Engineers will be needed to monitor DAC sites, and the additional demand for renewable energy will create jobs in the energy sector, as well as related services such as water and hospitality.
“You develop a whole range of infrastructure to make this industry possible,” she adds. “This infrastructure is not only beneficial for the industry, but also for the country.”
A chance to solve a “real problem”
Last June, I walked along a dirt road to Octavia Carbon's headquarters, just off Nairobi's Eastern Bypass, on the far outskirts of the city.
The employees I met on my tour exuded the boundless optimism that is typical of early-stage startups. “People used to write scientific papers about how no person would ever be able to run a marathon in under two hours,” Octavia CEO Martin Freymüller told me that day. Kenyan marathon runner Eliud Kipchoge broke this barrier in the 2019 race. His mural features prominently on the wall, along with the athlete's slogan: “No man is limited.”
“It’s not possible until Kenya does it,” Freimuller added.
OCTAVIA CARBON
He said Octavia, although not an official partner of the Ndirangu Great Carbon Valley venture, had a broader vision. The company got its start in 2022 when Freimuller, an Austrian development consultant, met Duncan Kariuki, an engineering graduate from the University of Nairobi, at OpenAir Collective, an online forum dedicated to carbon removal. Kariuki introduced Freymueller to his classmates Fiona Mugambi and Mike Bwondera, and the four began working on a prototype DAC, first in a laboratory space rented from the university and then in an apartment. Neighbors soon complained about the noise, and six months later the business moved to its current warehouse.
That same year, they announced their first prototype, which they affectionately named on Thursday after it was unveiled at a Nairobi Climate Network event. Octavia was soon demonstrating its technology to high-profile visitors, including King Charles III and President Joe Biden's ambassador to Kenya, Meg Whitman.
Three years later, a team of more than 40 engineers built its 12th DAC unit: a metal cylinder the size of a large washing machine containing a chemical filter using amine, an organic compound derived from ammonia. (Octavia declined to provide additional information about the filter inside the car because the company is awaiting patent approval for the design.)
